Annotated Bibliography 4

Annotated Bibliography 4
Kasper, Gabriele. (2000). Four Perspectives on L2 Pragmatic Development
( http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/Networks/Nwig/default/html )

The writer bases the discussion on Canale and Swain’s framework of grammatical, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence. Since then, many experiments have been conducted to examine other influential factors which may contribute to L2 pragmatic development. This paper discusses how four perspectives on pragmatic development relate to each other.

The first perspective is pragmatic and grammar. Bardovi-Harlig and Dornyei (1998) find that “pragmatic and grammatical awareness are largely independent and that their development may be associated with different learning environments in a rather complex fashion” ( p.6). L2 learners with high grammatical competence might use the grammatical rules inappropriately in real communication. For them, grammatical errors are more serious than pragmatic errors while L2 learners with low grammatical competence show the opposite tendency.

The second perspective is information process which is derived from psychological paradigm. There are two most influential proposals. Schmidt’s noticing hypothesis (1986) says language input can become intake and later on will be available for further processing if it is noticed consciously (p. 14). Bialystok’s two dimensional model of L2 proficiency development (1993, 1994) explain “the development of already available knowledge along the dimensions of analyzed representation and control of processing” (p. 14).

The third perspective is sociocognitive theory which is based on Vygotsky’s notion of Zone of Proximal Development. Learners’ pragmatic competence develops if they engage in interaction. It is true that explicit instruction pushes learners to use the language in social interaction appropriately. In contrast, some studies show that without any explicit instruction, learners gradually develop their pragmatic competence due to the interactional demand (p. 22).

The fourth perspective is language socialization. Learning a foreign language is more than learning the language. L2 learners should also learn second culture (C2) in order to interact with native speakers appropriately (p. 33). Language teachers with communicative and culture repertoire enable to support learners’ learning of L2 pragmatics effectively. Therefore, language teachers do not have to be natives of L2 but they have to be experts in L2 (p. 33).

This article is very hard to comprehend. The reader finds difficulty in understanding the main idea of each perspective. Unfamiliarity with many new terminologies related to pragmatic development has been somewhat discouraging the reader to continue reading more seriously. This burden lessens when the article is being discussed in the class. The knowledge of perspectives in pragmatic development helps the reader to analyze the phenomenon in L2 classroom.